Final Algebra ll Update:

Boat Project Reflection:

Were you able to come up with original ideas for your project, either for the end goal or for smaller steps within your project?I feel as though my partner Corry and I excelled at being original throughout the final boat project. I noticed some groups making extremely similar designs to each other, but every single one of our boats three main iterations were completely unique in the sphere of our projects boats. I feel like our final boat especially was extremely unique when compared to the boats of our peers and our specific design emphasizing on speed and stability.Did you research/apply techniques used by experts?We did in fact apply techniques from professional catamaran websites into our final product such as the fin shaping, but I feel as though our boat could have been even better if we had looked at professional information throughout the project instead of just for our final boat.In what ways did you shape your project without input from your teacher?Throughout our boat designing and building process, as I said earlier my partner Corry and I created many unique designs and ideas that our teacher had very limited input on. Specifically our catamaran design was our idea only and I think it turned out very well.What is a challenge you tackled on your own? What did you need help with?One major challenge we tackled on our own was converting our boat from its first draft to its second draft, adding a much steeper rocker profile and angled sides to create better handling characteristics. We needed help with this however, seeing as we struggled to create proper tight fitting sides for our boat. On the transition from second draft to third draft however, shifting our idea into a pontoon boat we did mainly by ourselves.From the outset, was your project too ambitious, too easy, or a perfect balance? How did you adapt?I personally feel as though the designs my partner and I chose were a perfect balance of not being overly complicated, but still enough for us to learn and grow through our work. Because of this, we were able to easily adapt our work and methods when faced with issues such as no passenger space on our third draft, we were able to quickly think up a solution since we handed not overloaded ourselves with an overly complicated design.What principles of mathematics did you apply to your project?We applied a decent amount of math to this project, but I feel as though it was mainly during earlier stages when trying to find out depth based on weight using those cups filled with pennies. I would say that the main principle used for that work was pythagorean theorem, which helped us to measure out the volume of the cup acting out a full cone shape extending from the bottom which was crucial to finding our total depth later on.